Student Athletes

By Richard Heaton aka zanderlex

Currently, there is a huge debate on whether or not Student Athletes should be paid for participating in N.C.A.A. sporting events. There are some who believe that an athletic scholarship is all that a student needs while there are others who say that an athletic scholarship is nothing compared to how much money the N.C.A.A. pulls in each year per student.

During the final few days of September 2013, EA Sports and another sports licensing company settled with Student Athletes, which leaves the N.C.A.A. defending itself on its own. Because of this, drastic changes will begin all over colleges across America if the N.C.A.A. either loses the lawsuit or settles.

It hasn’t happened yet, though there is a simple way on how colleges could pay their athletes. Let’s pick a football conference with eight teams and have that conference pick a maximum amount that the schools would pay each player.

Let’s say that this maximum amount is five thousand dollars, each school would give the conference five thousand dollars per student and the conference would hold that money until the end of the season. At the end of the season, the money will be distributed to the players based on what place their schools have finished in.

The school that finishes in first place will get the maximum amount, which means that each athlete will receive the full five thousand dollars. The team that finishes in second place will distribute ninety percent of the amount to its players. Therefore each athlete of the second place team will receive a total of forty five hundred dollars.

The amount will decrease by ten percent per place all the way down to the team that finishes in eighth place. Each of their athletes will receive thirty percent of the maximum amount, or fifteen hundred dollars.

Each team puts in five thousand dollars per player, so what happens to the extra money that each of the bottom teams puts in? Each team will receive the extra money back, however they may have restrictions. This means that the last place team will get thirty five hundred dollars back per player.

Every now and then we have a good player who plays for a bad team, so how do we compensate for a player who played for the eighth place team, received fifteen hundred dollars, and led the conference in a certain stat? The answer is quite simple and is the basis of those restrictions mentioned earlier.

If a player leads the conference in a major stat but plays for a team that finishes in the bottom half of the conference, that player will be required to be given a percentage of the refund that their school received.

The eighth place school receives a thirty five hundred dollar refund per player, and there is a five hundred dollar decrease per place. This means that the fifth place team, the first of the bottom half will receive a refund of two thousand dollars.

Therefore, a conference leader could be paid a one thousand dollar bonus for being on the eighth place team with a two hundred dollars decrease per place which means a leader on the fifth place team will receive a two hundred dollar bonus.

It would also be possible for second place stat finishers to get a reward at a fifty percent rate which means five hundred dollars for playing on the eighth place team and one hundred dollars for playing on the fifth place team, and maybe even a twenty five percent rate for third place finishers.

There has also been a lot of talk that if athletes of big sports such as football and basketball were paid, then athletes of all other sports would have to be paid as well, no matter how small the sport.

This can also be fixed with the conference setting a maximum reward for each sport. With this, any given school in a certain conference could have a maximum amount of five thousand dollars for football and basketball, maybe two thousand dollars for baseball and soccer, and maybe even five hundred dollars for sports as small as Swimming and Volleyball.

Who knows, maybe a format like this would help the athletes, Colleges, and N.C.A.A.